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Comment by bikamonki | Hacker News Reader

You make it sound as if Joe or Jane sits down one day, after finishing highschool, pondering life options and just come up with: Hey! I'll be a prostitute, money is good and if I am careful no harm should happen to me. It's just a job!

It is obvious that most prostitutes are not there by choice, by a mature rational decision. Most prostitutes are victims dragged into it by ignorance, by poverty, by drug addiction, by human traffic and exploitation. The psychological damage is done too fast too soon, rehab is hard if not impossible. In many cases they become pregnant and now they have another mouth to feed. If the kid is a girl, very likely to learn to do what the mother does.

It should be a crime! However, only the buyer should be punished, as it would be very unjust to punish the victim twice.

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> You make it sound as if Joe or Jane sits down one day, after finishing highschool, pondering life options and just come up with: Hey! I'll be a prostitute, money is good and if I am careful no harm should happen to me. It's just a job!

Given that people freely choose very similar jobs (porn actors & actresses), it would appear to me that some consider this a legitimate and good life choice (plenty of sex, good money, good working hours).

Having said that, I personally don't understand why anyone would choose that life path. But I also don't understand why anyone would voluntarily go into the military. Different people like different things!

'some consider'

It is true that 'sometimes' a seatbelt is the actual cause of death but the huge majority of cases it does save a life.

It is true that 'some' people freely chose to be pornstars or prostitutes but the great majority of times is innocent teens dragged into it for the reasons already stated.

A law is made for the general case in spite of particular exceptions.

You argue under the presumption that the prostitute is there against their will. Assuming prostitution is made legal and thus brothels are allowed to operate under government regulations there shouldn't be any emotional or physical trauma. Prostitutes would become prostitutes because they would want to or because circumstances determined that that was the best way for them to make a living. Pregnancy wouldn't be an issue either. You know people become porn stars because they want to right? How is being a prostitute in a regulated industry any different?

Except for trafficking and exploitation (well, except insofar as economic duress is exploitation, in which case that too), all that's true of many legal low-status jobs, and trafficking and exploitation (beyond the economic duress of poverty in capitalism) are issues created of exacerbated by criminalization.

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